


Still Couldn't Hide

by Ray_Writes



Series: Tumblr Prompts [38]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alcohol, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-11 01:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15961814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ray_Writes/pseuds/Ray_Writes
Summary: Donna and the Doctor both say a little too much.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Couldn't get to bed right away last night, so have another sentence prompt drabble! I think I combined two of tumblr anon's requests in this one, so hopefully they don't mind. Already at work on another one, so hopefully that'll be out soon. Additionally, the title for _this_ one comes from the song "You'll Never Know" which has been covered by a variety of artists, perhaps most famously by Vera Lynn. For now, please enjoy!

In fairness to him, he’d only wanted to see her having a good time after the Library. But he probably should’ve stepped in after the fifth drink at least.

“Spaceboy!” Donna crowed at him as she wheeled around and noticed it was him tapping her shoulder. “No, hang on, that’s not right.”

“That’s alright.” 

“I’ll get it in a minute. This is my best friend,” she added to the barman, who nodded but said nothing. “I’ll bet you thought he was my fiancé or something, didn’t you? Everybody does. No shame in it.”

“How about we leave the nice barman alone, eh Donna? I’ll handle her tab,” the Doctor added in undertone, sliding a fair few credits across the counter.

“Man, that’s it! Space _ man _ ,” Donna declared. She nearly dropped right to the floor when he helped her off her stool, so he simply looped her arm over his shoulders and wound his own around her waist. “You’re my favorite man, you know that? Even if you’re an alien man.”

“Well, thank you, Donna,” he replied, lips twitching. Honestly, he was quite chuffed. Donna wasn’t usually so free with the compliments sober.

“Gonna travel with you forever. That’s a promise. That’s a vow, Doctor, I swear it. We should do those, vows.” Donna gasped as a thought occurred to her. “We should get married!”

The Doctor was fairly convinced now that there’d been something stronger in _his_ drink. “Sorry?”

“You and me, cos we’re all the other’s got.”

That was a rather sad statement of truth. He pushed the door of the bar open, the colder air hitting them and hopefully doing Donna some good as he thought over his response. “But Donna, we’re not a couple, remember?”

“Oh, right,” she realized, laughing. “That’s not real. Neither was Lee. Or Lance, come to think of it. Sod getting married!” She bellowed unexpectedly.

“Right, okay, getting inside now,” he said, quickly steering her towards where he’d parked the TARDIS. He fortunately could keep hold of Donna now that he knew that snapping trick, so it was easy enough to bundle her inside. The Doctor elected to continue straight up the ramp and into the corridor. He could always come back to place them in the Vortex once he’d gotten Donna sorted.

They entered her room, and the Doctor paused, unsure whether to deposit her on the bed and leave or to make some attempt at helping her get ready for sleep. “Er, you haven’t got some nightclothes lying about, have you?”

“Top drawer.” She stumbled out of his grasp and seemed steady enough, so he went to fetch them.

Of course when he turned back round, Donna had shucked her shirt and appeared to be wrangling with the clasp of her bra.

The Doctor dropped her nightclothes in shock. “Donna!”

“Oh, like you haven’t seen the girls before,” she said airily. “Or tried to. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you sneaking a glance now and then.”

He flushed red with embarrassment and guilt and only then remembered to spin away on his heels. “Madam, I believe you are bluffing.”

Donna snorted. “Sure I am. Where’s my nightshirt?”

“On the floor.”

He only turned back around when Donna said it was safe, though of course that did little good when he noticed she’d done all the buttons up wrong and he had to help undo and redo them.

“Please remember this was purely platonic in the morning,” he urged her as she patiently watched him work from her position sat on the bed. No warning about hands in sight, from the looks of it.

“That’s alright. We’ll just go to Space Vegas tomorrow and get married.”

That again? The Doctor sighed. “Donna, you don’t want to marry me.”

“And just why not?” She demanded, having the audacity to look offended.

“Because you should marry someone you love.”

“But I love you,” Donna insisted, belligerence giving way to something far more sincere and vulnerable. “You’re my best mate, and I wanna spend the whole rest of my life with you. Don’t you love me, too?”

“Well—”

“No, course you don’t,” she said abruptly, and to his dismay tears sprung to her eyes. “I’m just stupid, dumpy Donna. Not pretty or perfect like all those other girls. You never married them, so why’d you ever want to marry me?” She flopped over onto her side away from him.

He was extremely out of his depth and very confused. All he knew was that he didn’t want her upset. Until now, the Doctor had assumed that admitting his feelings would almost certainly do so, only it seemed that he’d hid them so thoroughly she’d gone the opposite direction and gotten upset anyway.

It was everything with Lee weighing on her mind, he decided. Donna didn’t do well feeling as though she were alone. He could sympathize. Of course she would convince herself she wanted what she’d had in the Library with him. After all, the Doctor was all she had.

With all that, there was only one thing to say. “Donna, listen to me. If it would make you happy, I would marry you in a heartsbeat.”

“You don’t mean that,” she said with a sniffle.

“Of course I do,” he stated. She didn’t move. “Donna Noble, you are the first thing on my mind, the last thought before sleep, and my truest love.”

There was a pause, then she wriggled back around and smiled up at him. “Really?”

“Yes. Now please go to sleep.”

“Okay.” Donna snuggled into her pillow in an unfairly adorable manner. “Night, Doctor.”

“Goodnight.”

He left, only to return shortly with some medicine and a glass of water for the hangover that was sure to afflict her in the morning. The TARDIS’ medicine would clear that right up, though.

Donna was already fast asleep, and he lingered as long as he dared to watch her. His beautiful Earthgirl...not that she was actually his, even if Donna had drunkenly promised herself to him tonight. The Doctor dimmed the lights and left her room for good.

Not only had she promised herself, she’d also pulled more truth out of him than he was usually comfortable giving. Yet he felt safe in that far too candid admission; Donna was much too intoxicated to recall anything from tonight by the time she woke up, and if she did somehow hang onto it she’d be more likely to convince herself it was all a dream.

But what a dream though, hey?

The Doctor dropped into the jump seat and kicked his feet up on the console, letting his head fall back with a despairing sigh. “Oh, Donna. You will never know how I feel.”

It was simply better that way. He couldn’t risk losing the best friend he’d ever loved.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so I did my best to write myself out of the angst-corner that the sentence prompt necessitated. Here's hoping you all like this new conclusion!

Unknown to the Doctor, Donna had developed an interesting habit during the year they had spent apart and she had decided to look for him now that her eyes had been opened to the wider universe. And it all came down to her pesky habit of missing stuff.

Notes, copious amounts of notes. Anything she thought odd, anything that seemed important, she took down. It was how they’d ended up solving the situation on Messaline, after all. Otherwise she’d have clean missed that.

Donna knew herself well, and one thing about herself was that when she got drunk, she got  _ drunk _ . The kind of drunk that let a person miss an alien invasion or two. It was something she’d been working on, and she hardly ever indulged in that sort of behavior any longer.

But just in case, whenever Donna went out for a night, she was sure to take notes before she let herself drift off to sleep and forgetfulness in the morning. So, once Spaceman was out the door that night, that was exactly what she did.

Which was why Donna woke to a piece of paper stuck to her cheek with drool that said in her much less tidy than usual scrawl,  _ Doctor loves me, Space Vegas to-morrow _ .

“...what the  _ hell _ ?”

The TARDIS was kind enough to bring her lights up just enough to spot the space aspirin that she wasn’t sure whether the ship or Spaceman himself had supplied. Donna gulped both down and sighed in relief as the pounding in her head receded.

The missive she’d written herself, however, remained the same.

“Oh, this is gonna be so shaming,” Donna muttered to herself. What had she gone and said last night? Or perhaps more importantly, what had  _ he _ said?

Donna stared hard at those first three words. She must have gotten it muddled somehow. But then what had really happened?

There was only one other soul on the TARDIS, one person who would have that answer. So Donna heaved herself out of bed, stuffed her feet into her slippers, shrugged on a robe and went in search of a Spaceman.

“Doctor? Doctor!”

“In the kitchen!”

She found him busy at the stove with a skillet, and he shot her a dazzling smile over his shoulder. Was that the sort of smile of a man in love? He looked just the same as always.

“There she is. Thought you could do with a spot to eat, get something else in your stomach.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Donna mumbled, dropping into a chair. How was she going to bring this up without making a fool of herself?

The Doctor must have read something in her unenthusiastic reply, for he frowned and asked, “Everything alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Listen,” she paused a moment more, then continued, “we’re not heading to Space Vegas today, are we?”

The effect was comical. The Doctor nearly dropped the skillet he’d been carrying over right onto his foot, and he gaped at her for a long moment before his mouth snapped shut. “Um, no,” he squeaked. “Why- why would you think that?”

“Cos I wrote myself a reminder about it,” she confessed, taking the note out of her robe pocket and sliding it across the table. She watched his eyes scan it and go wide, his skin somehow turning even more pale. “Sorry. That was probably just a bunch of gibberish, wasn’t it? Something I made up.”

Spaceman’s hand went up to tug on his ear. Donna’s eyes narrowed.

He coughed and said, “Er, yeah, probably.”

When he looked up and met her stare, she saw him visibly deflate. The Doctor scooped bacon and eggs onto her plate, then wandered back over to the sink with the skillet. He started washing it, all without another word.

“Doctor. Hey, what’s going on?”

He shut off the water, standing with his back to her for a moment. Then he turned and walked back over, throwing himself into the chair opposite.

“Nothing. Well, not Space Vegas — you were keen to go, but I reckon you’ve thought twice about it.”

“But — then I was right, about what I wrote,” she began haltingly. “You said…”

“Yep,” he answered the sentence she wasn’t able to finish.

Donna stared at the Doctor. The Doctor stared more at her left ear than at her face, looking supremely uncomfortable about the whole thing. “What would you say that for?” 

Maybe it had just been to shut her up — God, she’d probably given the whole game away, and this was a goodbye breakfast before she got dumped back at her mum’s for breaking the rules—

“Because it was...true?”

It was her turn to gape. “I’m still drunk.”

“No, you’re not.”

“ _ Yes _ , because how else would this be happening? You’d never be saying that if I was sober!”

The Doctor sighed. “No. No, I wouldn’t, and I shouldn’t have said it to you drunk. I suppose I was counting on you forgetting—”

“Because it was a lie?” Oh God, he’d been planning to give her a free pass on whatever she’d let slip, and she’d gone and ruined it by taking  _ notes _ .

“No, because I didn’t want you to be upset with me,” he corrected.

“What would I be upset for?”

“For me breaking the rules,” he answered plainly. “I do love you, Donna, and I said I wouldn’t. Should’ve known from the minute you said ‘Planet of the Hats’ that was a fool’s hope. Maybe I did know. Maybe that’s why I said anything at all.” His voice grew quieter and quieter into mumbles, and his gaze landed on the table as he propped his chin on a hand. “I promised no complicated, and I went and made it complicated. Oh, blimey.”

Donna was still stuck on the words  _ I do love you, Donna _ being said by the Doctor in that exact order. He was mad, madder than she’d ever thought him, if he really felt that way. It took her another minute to wrench her thoughts to the current matter at hand. “Doctor…”

“It’s alright.” He sniffed once and made to leave the table, but Donna reached out and snagged his hand.

“No, it isn’t. You thought I’d be upset?”

He looked at her finally with those big, brown eyes. “Aren’t you?”

“Well, yes, but not for — not why you’re thinking. Look, I said it, too, didn’t I? I must’ve, you wouldn’t have said it on your own,” Donna decided. A rueful quirk of his lips told her she was right. “I’m the one who wanted Space Vegas! You think I’d have said that to just anyone drunk?”

Anyone else in her life would’ve taken the opportunity that granted, but the Doctor said, “No.”

“Right, so, what do you think that means?” Donna found herself holding her breath once it was asked, not sure whether to let his hand go or not. Spaceman was looking at it, the two of them joined together.

“You...love me, too?” His eyes flicked up to hers for a moment.

“Well,  _ d’uh _ ,” she said, her voice a little too soft and shy to have the usual effect. Donna could feel her cheeks heating up, and the Doctor smiled as she squeezed his hand once and then let go. Donna rubbed her hands over her thighs, a nervous energy expelled at the admission. How had she even said it? How had it not meant the end of the universe?

Neither of them seemed capable of looking at each other for long. For something to do, Donna picked up her fork at last and took a bite of egg. She placed it down again almost immediately.

“Something wrong?”

“No. I mean, it just sort of got cold,” she said. “While we were talking.”

“Oh.”

“You haven’t eaten either, have you,” she realized. “You know I don’t believe all that ‘Time Lords need less food’ rubbish.”

“No, you don’t,” he agreed. “Alright.” The Doctor stood, taking her plate and scraping the food into the trash before dropping it into the sink as well. “We’ll get breakfast out.”

There was a question in there he was asking, and Donna very much wanted to answer it. But first she had to check, “Not Space Vegas, though, right?”

He grinned, giving a single shake of the head. “Right.”

“Then yeah, we’ll do that.” Donna stood up. “I mean, I know what I must have said last night, but I’m in no rush. Not making the same mistakes like with Lance.”

“Oh, but Donna, we’ve known each other for almost two years,” the Doctor pointed out as he followed her into the corridor. “That’s not so bad.”

“Oi, Time Boy, don’t push your luck.”

Maybe she owed her drunk self a favor, but she wasn’t about to start taking advice from her!


End file.
